Expansion, Expansion, Expansion!!!

So after the hectic time of recovering from the nosebleed that wouldn't stop and the nasal packs that caused caos on my nose... I have been expanding like no other. haha

So since the 12th of April (Day before my nosebleed) I have been turning the key twice a day. Each key turn is suppose to be 1/2 a millimeter. As of today, I have turned the key 30 times, which is suppose to be equivalent to 7.5mm. Measuring my gap, I am not quite at 7.5mm, but I have read that the gap isn't a 100% accurate depiction of how much you have expanded. There is elastic fibers in your gums inbetwen your front two teeth that can tend to pull your teeth together. As of right now I am about 6-6.5mm.

Today I went to see the Orthodontist, and he was pretty happy with where I am so far. Unfortunately, he still wants another 12 turns out of me.... 3mm more! :( But that is more then fine and soon I will be getting these teeth back together. I am scheduled to get braced to start to move my front teeth back together May 17th (3 weeks from today).

Here are some photos to show my progress though expansion. I appologize that they aren't the best pictures, and from now on, I won't take a photo after a meal and i'll make sure to brush first. haha

It's not always easy street...

Soooo after almost a week of healing perfectly and not having any complications or discomfort or pain, I had an appointment with my surgeon to take a look at my healing and to start my expanding. He wanted to do the first turns just to make sure that everything was expanding correctly... and of course, I had to brag about how well I was healing and how little swelling I was having.. blah blah blah....

And then came Wednesday morning.....

At 9:00am Wednesday April 13th, I was pleasantly awaken by a dripping from my nose, which to my delight just happened to be blood. I didn't really freak out at the start as I have read and was told by my surgeon that nosebleeds are an all too common occurance after this surgery. So I go to the bathroom and clean myself up, get some tissues, google how to stop a nose bleed, do what they say and it isnt really stopping all that much. It slows down a couple times but doesnt stop.

Fast forward a couple hours and its about noon and my nose is still bleeding (not 100% the entire time, but a good percentage) so I give my surgeon a call. Im getting a little nervous because at this time, it is really coming out of my nose heavy and there is a pretty large amount of blood mixing with my spit as good amount of blood is going not only out my nose, but down my throat. Surgeon tells me to just relax, stuff some tissues in my nose, lay back at a 45* angle and relax and that he will call me back in an hour. I fell asleep and his phone call wakes me up, and to my surprise the bleeding has stopped! Awesome!

.....45 minutes later, here we go again. So it is back to bleeding and is on and of and on and off. The disgusting thing is that right before it would start bleeding again, I would feel something slide into the back of my throat, something thick, something gooey... something... like a blood clot. :(

Flash forward to aprox 7:30pm and my nose is still going back and forth between bleeding and not. I finally decide that I can't allow this to happen all night because I wont be able to sleep and make it though the night with this going on, so I called my surgeon. He finally decided that I should come into his office so he can get a grasp of this nosebleed.

At 9:00 I arrived at his office and he started to do what he could do to stop the bleeding. His thought is that I have a nosebleed towards the back of my nasal cavity which I guess is pretty uncommon, but it can happen from time to time. He attempts to stop this by sliding some gel'd up tubes down my nose (very uncomfortable), but unfortunately it doesnt stop. His next plan of attack is inserting something called a Nasal Pack. A Nasal Pack is basically about a 2" foam tampoon that is inserted into the nose. Let me tell you this is pretty painful and creates an insane amount of discomfort. Unfortunately these don't stop the bleeding, as they don't reach the area in my nasal cavity that the bleeding is coming from...

.....Off to the ER we go!

Once at the ER, my surgeon removes the Nasal Packs (PAINFUL!) and preps me for insertion of an even longer nasal pack. He does this my dripping Likocane (sp?) down my nose which numbs things up a bit, but still hurts in the process. The new nasal packs are Posterior Nasal Packs and are about 4" long and have two balloons in them which can be inflated once inside to add a desired amount of pressure. Once these are in, the bleeding stops and I am happy! Its quite a relief not to be bleeding anymore, even though I have tubes hanging out of my face (See picture below, and can't you tell how miserable I am?)

So yea... these beautiful things had to stay in my face for at least 24 hours. The time they were in wasn't terrible but it wasn't a great experience. Having anything like that which isn't a normal part of your body will take a toll and it definitely did. I was pretty exhausted the entire time and just didn't feel my best.

Luckily, they were taken out about a day and a half later, the bleeding had stopped and I havent looked back since!! :) 

Post-Operation (Day 1-5)

 Pre-Operation: Night Before

I'm sorry for being so ugly and I hope it doesn't keep you for reading further, haha. But I took this picture the night before surgery just so I can have a "before" photo to compare to.

Post Operation: Day 1 

I stayed the night in the ICU. My surgeon prefered this because he feels that any sort of surgery that takes place within the vicinity of your airway and/or any major artery's should be closely monitored right after surgery. As I said, I stayed the night in the ICU which was more or less filled with sleeping, watching tv and icing my face. After surgery, I kept ice on my face constantly, and I think that is why I didn't have any extreme swelling, as you can see above. One thing that is uncomfortable is the numbness of my teeth. Obviously the surgery is in close range to the nerves of my teeth, and because of that I have lost all feeling in my top teeth and gums. I guess this is a good thing during and after surgery as if you didn't, I'm sure there would be a lot more pain involved. Lets just hope that the sensation will come back because it is a pretty uncomfortable feeling. The hospital experience was good, and I didn't experience too much discomfort.  

 Post Operation: Day 2

My 2nd day home was pretty un-eventful. After surgery I was pretty tired and most likely slept for most of the 24 hours. The surgery takes quite a toll on your body, and exhausts you which causes you to spend most of your day re-cooperating by sleeping.  Swelling began to increase minorly, specifically underneath my eyes/on the side of my nose. My face felt pretty tight in the areas of the bone cuts, but I guess that is pretty expected and obvious. Eating is a little difficult as mobility of my upper lip is pretty limited. My mouth didn't really have the motivation to open anyway, but even when attempting it will only go so far as the stitches limit how much movement is possible.

Post Operation: Day 3

Pretty much a whole bunch of the same. My cheeks swelled a good bit more as being able to apply ice 24/7 became a bit more difficult without having a nurse there to constantly get me ice. haha As far as pain, again, it was at a minimum. Only time I felt any pain was upon waking up in the morning. I figured this was normal as I didn't have ice on my face for most of the night, so it was able to heat up, swell more and as a result; pain!

 Post Operation: Day 4

On day 4, some of my swelling started to go down a bit but my face was still pretty tight in the areas of the cuts. As you can see, I gained a nice little bruise under my right eye which is more then expected, and pretty surprising that it was so limited. I am a pretty decent healer in general, so I don't think it is to surprising for me, but I have heard that bruising is expected. Something new that I started experiencing on this day was sensitivity of my bottom teeth.

Post Operation: Day 5

Swelling started to go down a lot. My top lip was pretty close to back to normal, or at least didn't feel like a balloon anymore. I still had the bruise under my eye, but it is at the Yellow stage, so it seems to be on its way out. One thing I started to notice was an increase in pressure on the bone cuts. Often it would feel as if the two bones at the vertical cut inbetween my front two teeth where pushing against one another. It actually would become pretty intense and become uncomfortable.

SARPE Surgery

On April 7th, 2011 I went under the knife for my SARPE (Surgically Assisted Rapid Pallatal Expansion Surgey). My surgery was scheduled for 8:00am at a hospital which is an hour away from where I live. I was required to be at the hospital at 6am, which forced me to wake up at 4am and leave my house by 5am.
Upon arrival, they checked me in and had me great ready in the hospital gown with the drafty back flap and no other clothes. Once I was in the bed, they began to get me prepped for surgery by asking me all the questions they have already asked me 100 times, setting me up with an IV and getting any necessary vital signs. Around 7:30am the Anasthelogist (spelling?) showed up and chatting with me a bit, had me sign a few things and blah blah blah. At that same time, my Oral Surgeon showed up and started to let me know what was going to happen and that we were going to get rolling. From there, the Anastehologist’s assistant came, gave me a drug to, and i quote ‘take the edge off’ haha and from there they rolled me to the operating room.
After arriving in the operating room, the Anasthelogist shows back up, puts the little rubber mask over my face and tells me to start taking some deep breaths. I’m about 4 breaths in and I hear him say ‘Okay, this will be the last one…” and I immediately think ‘what?!? how the Eff does he know that” and then I’m out…. I guess that is why he gets paid the big bucks.
When I come to, I am in the Recovery area of the hospital with an awesome nurse paying very close attention to me. I cant feel much pain at this moment, but can feel the blood in my nose and a little bit of a scratchy/dry throat as my speech is pretty raspy. I remember having a minor nose bleed but that is pretty common and I guess it isnt unusual for it to be pretty bad. My nose never really gushed, just seemed to leak for a couple hours after surgery, which was remedied by taping a piece of gauze under my nose. I was given something called “The Jaw Bra” which is a god send. It is a perfectly made sling to hold ice packs and fits over the face.
Immediately after surgery, most discomfort (didn’t experience much of any pain) was directly under my nose and not so much in the cheek area. I stayed in the Recovery area for what I would imagine was an hour or two, until I was moved to the ICU area. My surgeon wanted me in the ICU because in his opinion, any sort of surgery that is in the area of ones airway and major arteries in the face, should be looked after closely.
My time in the ICU was pretty boring. I stayed there over night and more or less slept with ice on my face, or watched tv with ice on my face. One bit of advice that I would give would be to keep ice on your face AS MUCH as possible. I didn’t gain much swelling over the time after surgery, and in my opinion, greatly due to the fact that I had ice on my face almost constantly. Another bit of advice I might give, is attempt to anticipate when you may need pain killers. Use ice in place of a pain killer as much as possible, but if you start to feel tight, or that you are warming up or minor discomfort, don’t be affraid to ask, as I think nipping the pain in the but before it really begins to hurt will help in the long run.
So that is pretty much my experience during the day of surgery and the time in the hospital afterwards. I left the hospital at 8:30am the next day with little swelling and little discomfort. I would also advice that you keep ice on your face during the ride home. Allowing your face to heat up will create swelling and cause discomfort.

Expander Day!

So I haven’t written anything in a long time and that is basically because not much has happened. About a month ago, I went into the Ortho to have spacers put between my teeth to make room for this aparatus called an Expander.
Two weeks ago they took a mold of my mouth to have the expander fit. Let me tell you, an accurate mold is a bitch to have made. Makes you feel like you’re going to throw up all over the place, but then you think “No, dont throw up!!!” because if you do, you’re going to have to swallow it since you have all the Goop in your mouth.. disgusting.. yes!
So today… WOOOOOO today!!! Today was explander day… It’s not as exciting as I am making it as this thing is quite the bitch. But… It means that I am moving forward and progress is being made, which is always exciting.
But yes… Today I went to the Ortho and they put the expander in. Its this metal thing that attaches to two of my molars and has a center brace that spans my mouth. The installation is easy… but its living with it that is pretty difficult (and this only happened 3 hours ago!)
Talking is absurd.. “S” and “N”s are tough… I never realized it but those two letters (and im sure ill find a bunch more) cause you to really force your tongue onto the roof of ur mouth… and with this thing in there… Impossible!!
Swallowing… also very hard! It always feels like you have some water or spit left in your mouth that you can never fully get rid of.
Eating… Also… Impossible. I came back to work after having the expander installed and tried to have lunch (Spaghetti and Sausage) and it just wasn’t happening. The food seems to want to go straight for the space between the roof of your mouth and the expander, which if you have the same mind frame as me… you’re not a fan of.
So after all that complaining, I will say it again.. I am very excited that the expander was installed. It is progress and there is nothing better then progress when working towards a goal.. perfect teeth! :)

Surgical Consultation

Today I had a consultation with a surgeon right next door to my orthodontist. I like that they are so close because they have worked together many times, and also are able to communicate very easily. The surgeon went through the procedure of looking through my mouth and checking out my teeth, ya know… what surgeons do! haha
He told me everything I needed to know about the surgery, even though I have already done soooooo much research and know a lot about it already. He was very informational with what he told me that I even learned some new things. He said I would be a great candidate for the surgery and that I should without a doubt go ahead and do it.
I left him with a great feeling about him as a surgeon and the surgery in general. I think that is a big part of this entire thing. You need to feel 100% comfortable with the people that are going to be doing this work on you for the next few years of your life. You need to have a good feeling about your ortho and your surgeon and trust him or her completely. I feel if you do not, then your experience is going to be that much more challenging and draining…. i think.. haha
I am yet to go through it all.. so…. here is to wishful thinking!

Here we go!

I have decided to start a blog in order to track this journey of getting braces. I hope that it will turn out to be a great place for me to share my experience, a learning location for others and possibly a place for me to vent about my frustrations during the process! haha
I am a 25 year old male from Albany, NY. I have always been minor self conscious about my teeth/smile in the sense of their alignment. I actually have pretty nice teeth as far as size, whiteness and such but because of a narrow pallet, I have a fairly crowded top and bottom set. Upon graduating in 2008 and starting my new career and being given dental insurance for the first time, I started thinking about braces.
In early September 2010 I visited a local Orthodontist and began discussing my options. He quickly advised me that for the best results I should consider surgery called Surgically Assisted Rapid Palletal Expansion (SARPE). As a child our top jaw is in two pieces and as time goes by it fuses together. Since I am now 25 years old, those pieces are fused solid together which is the reason for the surgery. This surgery will cut my top pallet in half right down the center. From what I have read about the surgery, it is generally a very painless surgery…. the only downfall…. a HUGE gap between your front two teeth (this goes away after a little time, obviously)
I left the office that day with the desire to look into the surgery and truely consider it. After some research, I came to find that my insurance didn’t cover any of the oral surgeons in my area… or so I thought… more about that later. Because of this I gave up hope of the surgery and was just set on getting braces. I took some time off before I called the ortho back due to work related reasons.
Flash forward to late October when I call the ortho back and schedule an appointment to have molds taken of my teeth for the braces (I am getting Incognito braces -on the inside- and they need perfect molds of your teeth). Upon arriving for my appointment, the Ortho approaches me once again and stresses that the surgery is the best option for me and stressed I should continue to look into it. What.A.Roller.Coaster!!! They take the molds of my teeth anyways, just incase I completely decided against the surgery.
Upon leaving, I do some extra research and dig a bit deeper (should have done that first!! Measure twice and cut once, right?) and find out that an oral surgeon which IS covered by my insurance (and did I mention RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO MY ORTHO!!!!!! haha) so I called and setup an appointment.
Currently… that is where I am at.. My appointment for the surgeon is December 2nd and hopefully the consultation goes well and I can get the ball rolling… and rolling and rolling… I will continue to update from time to time when I get extra info… talk to ya soon!